June 2022 CrowdStrike (CRWD) Stock Pick and Noble Oak Whiskey Pairing

June 2022

Authors: Allan Maule

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Website: crowdstrike.com

Twitter: @crowdstrike

CEO: George Kurtz

Founders: George Kurtz, Dimitri Alperovitch, and Gregg Marston

Market Cap at Time of Article: $36.7B

Current Analyst Recommendations (29 analysts’ price targets median): $250

Revenue: $431.01 million (Q4 2022); Q3 revenue up 63% year-over-year!

Insider Ownership: 6.8%. Would like to see higher than this, but being founder-led does increase our confidence despite this modest insider ownership.

What makes CrowdStrike worth your hard-earned money for the next decade or more?

Cybersecurity has become one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, boasting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12%. However, this doesn’t mean that any publicly-traded cybersecurity firm is a great investment. Instead, you want to focus on companies that are both historic performers and strategically well-positioned to grow by successfully targeting today’s top security risks.

CrowdStrike is such a company, offering a security platform that marries technology, threat intelligence, and cross-industry expertise. While their financial performance speaks for itself, CrowdStrike’s comprehensive and cloud-native approach to cybersecurity gives the company a lot of security (financial, not technical). Why? Because as cyber threats continue to target today’s larger remote workforce and bigger suite of cloud-and web-based applications, CrowdStrike’s clients will be wary of cutting any security spending. This makes security leaders like CrowdStrike well-positioned to become “mission-critical” in many clients’ eyes—translating to both recurring revenue and an enduring reputation as the go-to provider of information security.

Why talk about CrowdStrike to all your friends and family?

We’ve all seen our share of bad news across today’s bear market, so it’s more important than ever to look at companies with strong financial fundamentals in growing sectors like cybersecurity. CrowdStrike fits this goal perfectly, and it doesn’t hurt that you can now acquire them at a discount after their stock price slid with other tech stocks. Here’s how to translate what CrowdStrike offers to people who don’t think much about security:

Today, there’s a great chance you or someone you know work from home at least part of the time. With the explosion of remote work and hybrid work, IT teams have to protect a ton more endpoints (the laptops, smartphones, and other connected devices you use to work remotely). This is why CrowdStrike’s focus and proven success in endpoint protection makes them well-positioned to lead as a security provider. CrowdStrike has also been a leader in threat intelligence for years, having been involved in noteworthy cyberattack investigations like the 2014 Sony Pictures hack and the 2015–2016 cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee. They have also been named a 2022 Leader in Digital Threat Intelligence Management by Quadrant Knowledge Solutions.

How is this company disruptive?

CrowdStrike offers a cloud-native security platform called Falcon. This platform does not require any onsite appliances to work, making it easier to implement and more cost-effective in today’s age of remote work. Falcon’s ability to scale up security rapidly helped CrowdStrike grow its business among enterprise customers (35% penetration rate), but CrowdStrike estimates it has barely penetrated the corporate, SMB, and public sector market (less than 3%). This means there are a ton more potential customers for CrowdStrike to acquire, especially as cyberattacks continue to increase.

Conclusion

As hackers and other bad actors become more aggressive and the cost of a data breach grows, no IT department wants to cut its cybersecurity investment. This is great news for security leaders like CrowdStrike, who can count on customer loyalty (98% of CrowdStrike customers renewed their subscriptions in the last 5 years) to sustain their business while their expansion into smaller companies offers a ton of growth potential. With a comprehensive security platform that excels in critical areas like endpoint protection and threat identification, CrowdStrike is also strengthening in-demand security offerings like behavioral analysis and zero trust network access. This positions CrowdStrike to continue its leadership in the security space even as competition intensifies, making them well-worth your investment.

Whiskey pairing: Noble Oak – Double Oaked Bourbon

45% ABV, Price per bottle: $36

Clients count on CrowdStrike to provide a stout defense to their various endpoints, but it’s important to balance resilience with ease of use. Otherwise, you end up with cybersecurity so rigid that it keeps out both criminals and your employees.

In that spirit of balanced strength, this month we present Noble Oak bourbon for your palate to pursue. This award-winning, unsurprisingly oak-forward spirit delivers some delightful flavors in an elegant and cost-effective package—making it a great pairing for CrowdStrike that belongs in your whiskey cabinet.

This Ohio-based distillery also has a special love of nature, as the owners plant a new tree for each bottle sold. These 571,000 new trees have taken root everywhere from the Redwood forest of California to the Finger Lakes in New York. So you can feel good about helping the earth at the same time you’re helping yourself to this delicious bourbon.

The Nose, Palate, and Finish

The fresh cherry and honey notes on the nose make for a charming introduction to this whiskey, and there are also some traces of ginger mixed in.
The palate has popular flavors like vanilla and fruit layered into an oak box lined with leather. You might also notice some dark chocolate here.

This one finishes with a balanced caramel tingle that should have everyone reaching for another pour.

The Conclusion

If there’s any knock on Noble Oak, it’s that this whiskey is unremarkably good. It’s a very solid performer that should please a crowd (and the lower price point doesn’t hurt at all), but its balance and familiar flavors make it unlikely you’re looking at a new favorite with this one. Still, feel free to prove us wrong by making this your new go-to.

SCORE – 3.5/5